In sports, especially contact sports such as hockey and football, a significant amount of equipment is worn by the athlete while participating in the athletic event. This equipment can become wet with rain or with the perspiration of the athlete. The need then arises to clean and dry this equipment. This is especially difficult for the participants in hockey and football in light of the fact that all of this equipment cannot easily be cleaned by throwing it in the washing machine and dryer. If the equipment is not cleaned and dried well soon after becoming wet, then mold and mildew will develop on the equipment with resulting unpleasant odors. Furthermore, there is the problem for athletes who wear the equipment every day or every other day and need the equipment to completely dry in these short time frames.
Clothing drying racks or clothes stands are common, such as drying racks disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 445,633 to Becker and 2,084,854 to McCarthy, or clothes stands disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,310,180 to Neagle. These racks, however, are not well adapted for drying sports equipment which is large and heavy and are not adapted at all for allowing the equipment to be cleaned the rack. Also, while some drying racks may possibly be adapted to support the equipment, the space requirements needed to have sufficient air circulation from all sides for each piece of equipment to facilitate the quick drying times needed to dry all of the equipment adequately on one of these racks would be excessive. This would result in equipment that is put too high up for a child athlete to fully reach all of the equipment or, in the alternative, the floor space needed would be excessive. Further, the excessive weight of this equipment may be too much for these racks to support. Conventional racks do not allow the participant to easily and quickly determine if he has all of his equipment on the rack. Nor do they allow the participant to quickly and easily take equipment off of the rack to dress and return it to the rack when finished dressing since the equipment would not be displayed in an easily organized and compact fashion. This is particularly true for children athletes since they often lose or forget equipment if it is not all kept organized and in one place. Moreover, the prior art racks do not allow for the equipment, while drying on these racks, to be arranged in a cosmetically appealing fashion.
Display racks, on the other hand, such as the display rack disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,792,071 to Scarpa et al., while able to display clothing in a cosmetically appealing fashion, are not adapted to hold all of the large and heavy sports equipment and assure proper drying of each piece of equipment, even if this equipment could be displayed in an orderly fashion. Display racks may also utilize costly features not needed to properly dry and display the sports equipment. Nor are display racks constructed of materials which allow equipment to be cleaned while on the rack.
Further, the prior art racks and displays lack any means of easily moving them over long distances without carrying them. This can be very cumbersome, especially for individuals who wish to transport their equipment. Moreover, athletes would risk damage to the equipment because it would not be covered to protect it from the elements if transported out of doors on these racks.